Art and theater reviews covering Seattle to Olympia, Washington, with other art, literature and personal commentary.
If you want to ask a question about any of the shows reviewed here please email the producing venue (theater or gallery) or email me at alec@alecclayton.com. If you post questions in the comment section the answer might get lost.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Reading the Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes got me to thinking about
climbing trees. Not wanting to do it, God no. I’m 74 years old, and that’s a
wee bit too old for that kind of shenanigan. But remembering and thinking about
the logistics of it, how to get from one branch to another without scraping the
hell out of my arms and legs. It was a year or so ago that I read that book. But sitting on my patio just
now and looking at the trees, I starting thinking about it again. I could limb
that one and that one, if I was younger. What would my wife think if she came
home and saw me perched high in an oak tree? She’d probably think I’d lost my
mind.

But what about these two big ones in our side yard? No way
could I tackle them.

I was a great climber when I was a kid. My dad said I was
just like a monkey, and that pleased me greatly. I remember home movies of me
and my brother waving from high in the gum tree in our front yard in Tupelo,
the house on Woodlawn, I think, not the one on Magazine—meaning we must have been
eleven or twelve years old. And I remember climbing the giant magnolia on the
bank of Gordons Creek in Hattiesburg a few years later. I truly believed I was the only kid in the world who could climb that one.

For a long time after reading the Eagle Tree I looked at
trees while riding around town and thought about which ones were climbable and
which weren’t. The thing that struck me was that most are seemingly impossible
because the first branches don’t branch out until way past where they are
reachable from the ground. How in the world are you supposed to climb a tree if
you can’t reach the first branches? Scamper up like a money? Like a lumberjack
with a rope and spiked shoes but without the rope and spikes? I wish I could
ask March Wong about that. He was the hero of the Eagle Tree. He might have
been the best tree climber there ever was. He could tell me how to do it.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Wait Until Dark poster designed by James Stowe, courtesy Lakewood Playhouse

Lakewood
Playhouse opens its 2017-2018 season with the classic thriller Wait Until Dark,
one of the most suspenseful plays ever mounted on stage. The play by Frederick Knott was first performed on Broadway
in 1966. A film version starring
Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkan was released the following year, and it has been
revised on Broadway and performed in community theaters repeatedly ever since.

Lakewood Playhouse calls it a cat and mouse game. Susy
Hendricks (Deya Ozburn) is a blind, but has learned to get along quite well
without eyesight. She and her husband, Sam (Ben Stahl, recently seen as the monster in New Muses Theatre’s
Frankenstein) are threatened by a trio of potential killers; but in the dark
Susy has the advantage on them.

“The
play is a tight, one-room thriller with a detailed story and complicated
mechanics, and working on it really keeps you on your toes,” says director
James Venturini. “And the ending, when played truthfully, is extremely
harrowing.”

Venturini
says that he was attracted to the script because the characters are complex and
interesting, and not stereotypes or caricatures. “It's not a mystery, but more
of a suspense thriller, so you’re not pursuing a solution, but a resolution,
and it has some interesting twists.” He says he saw the film when it first came
out and again about two years ago, and likes the play better.

Ozburn,
who does the lion’s share of the heavy lifting in this drama says her character,
Susy, lives a life “not quite as posh as Laura Petrie, but not far from the
mark, in essence,” even though she is totally blind. “It’s a very psychological
thriller,” Ozburn says. “For one of the men: it’s a game…like a cat playing
with its food before he kills and eats it. The other two are more grifter-style
in approaching the con, but all have at her in their own way, and though for
great parts of time she could easily escape and get out of there…she doesn’t.
She stays, and defends her home and person, finding out what her true potential
really is…it’s a whole ‘hero’s journey’ in a basement, really.” And she
triumphantly adds, “And written for a woman. In 1966. How great is that?”

Jed
Slaughter plays Mike, one of the trio of bad guys. He says, “One of the things
that appealed to me was that it would allow me to play a different sort of
character from my most common archetypes: the nice guy and the comically
misogynistic jerk. While my character, Mike, is generally the ‘nice guy’ of the
trio of criminals, he's still ultimately a con artist trying to swindle a blind
lady. When I read the script leading up to auditions, Mike was definitely the
character who most appealed to me. He gets a chance to really evolve over the
course of the show in how he views and interacts with the other characters that
surround him. It's also great fun to convey two different intentions
simultaneously, as we're often voicing one thing while being free to completely
contradict ourselves visually, taking advantage of Susy's blindness.”

Rounding
out the cast will be Mari Dowd, Kerry Bringman, Lakewood Playhouse artistic director
John Munn, and Travis Martinez.

Ozburn
sums up her assessment of her character, Susy, by saying, “It is not her lack
of sight which dooms her, and makes her a stereotypical victim. It is her
intellect and sense of fight that we are watching, and rooting for. Yes, she is
battling three men who are constantly at a physical advantage, but they mistake
the situation and unmask their own folly by underestimating someone’s ability
to thrive and survive with any kind of limitation.”

Wait
Until Dark comes with a parental advisory. It contains scenes of psychological
horror and intense action. There will be special showings September 14 (Pay
What You Can Night) and September 21(“Pay What You Can” Actor’s
Benefit).

There’s a new
visual arts venue in Olympia, and I hope this won’t be a one-shot deal, but
rather the first of many shows to come.

Collage artist
Evan Clayton Horback secured the use of the balcony area at Browsers Bookshop for an
art exhibit space and curated a show featuring works on paper by five local
artists: Nikki McClure, Arrington De Dionyso, Aisha Harrison, Horback and
Madeline Waits. McClure is probably Olympia’s best-known
artist. Horback and Harrison are also well known (Harrison’s exhibition of clay
and salt sculptures at Salon Refu in 2013 was one of the most astounding
sculpture shows I’ve ever seen). Dionysoand Waits are new to me.

In a written
statement presented as a collage, Horback wrote: "This show ... includes
work from a variety of artistic processes, styles and themes creating a more
unified visual conception of our artistic lives. Olympia seems to be changing
briskly and this exhibition grew out of perceived need for artists to put forth
some more unified vision in a new, community space. For me, A Paper Narrative seems to highlight the
freedoms to dream ideologically while also considering some of the layered
social-political complexities working against them."

Each artist is
represented by approximately half a dozen small works on paper.

Horback creates
collage on the covers of old books. They are rough and gritty in texture and
are often narrative in content, although the stories are seldom if ever clearly
spelled out. They contain elements of mystery, often humor, and sometimes sly
references to social and political content. Many of his collages look like
story illustrations in literary magazines, and some look like book covers —no
little irony there, keeping in mind that they are collaged onto book covers. In
one of his works in this show the cover is “turned back” —literally, like
covers on a bed. And peeking out are the figures of a sleeping couple. On the
“sheet” beneath them (bed sheet/sheet of paper) is written in calligraphic
script “on this page so pure and white . . .”

His works are
simple, entertaining, thoughtful and aesthetically pleasing.

The wonder of
McClure’s cut-paper art is her use of depth, not deep space as illustrated
using perspective, but the shallow depth of things that are layered, an effect
that is heightened in her works because of the high black-white contrast. Her
paper cuts have a wide appeal because they picture families and children and
working people in situations to which everyone can relate, and because they are
so meticulously crafted.

Her piece called
“Go” features the image of a bicyclist as seen from the point of view of the
cyclist. All that can be seen of the rider is hands gripping the handlebar, and
all that can be seen of the bike is the handlebar and its attached woven basket
—like a girl’s bike from the 1950s. She, assuming it’s a she, is heading down a
country road, and three other bicyclists are pedaling in a collision course
toward her. It is dramatic and delightful, and we just somehow know she’s going
to win this showdown.

Harrison is
showing collages on wood panels that feature figures, mostly faces, somewhat
crudely drawn with subtle colors and a delicate contrast of line drawing with
larger flat areas of color. The paper is crinkled and slightly transparent.
These collages do not have the immediate impact of her sculpted figures but
grow on the viewer with time. Most intriguing is that close examination reveals
line drawings that create the effect of an x-ray that shows not muscle and bone
but what appears to be some kind of ancient hieroglyphics.

Waits’s
decorative works in ink and other media combine elements of Australian dot
paintings and psychedelic art of the 1960s. DeDionyso’s colorful works present
figures, some nude and some clothed, marching and dancing across the surface.

Art galleries by
the dozens have come and gone while Childhood’s End Gallery in Olympia just
keeps rolling along. This venerable queen of South Sound art galleries has
shown quality art since 1971 and shows no signs of
growing weary. They have introduced many of the region’s best artists to its
citizenry, including many of Washington’s best women artists; which is why I
had high hopes for their current show, Seasons:
Women Painters of Washington.

Sadly, this
exhibition is crowded with art that epitomizes the most clichéd samples not of
feminist art but of stereotypical “female” art — paintings in watercolor,
gouache, pastel, and other media that are best described as soft, sweet,
pretty, lovely. The colors, no matter the media, are “pastel,” bright, warm and
summery. It’s as if the paintings are decked out in their Easter dresses with
flowers in their hair.

There are a few
abstract paintings and a whole lot of pictures of birds, flowers and scenery.

I almost never
agree with juror’s choices, but in the case of this show’s First Place winner,
I do. It is a small pastel landscape by Barbara Noonan titled “Vert Harmony.”
It pictures a serene country road receding into the distance across a plowed
field to a clump of trees. Blue and green dominate, with
a greenish blue in the foreground part of the road, changing to a soft aqua in
the distance. The perspective is flattened out in a manner much like that in
Wayne Thiebaud’s famous San Francisco cityscapes, and the paint application is
rich and creamy without being ostentatious.

Another excellent
little landscape is Beverly Shaw-Starkovich’s “Red Trees with Shed.” This fiery
landscape has burning-hot red and red-orange
trees, yellow-green fields, and a hot yellow sky. The paint application is
heavy and rough, and as in Noonan’s “Vert Harmony,” there is hardly any
atmospheric or linear depth. The sky and trees push aggressively forward. For
such a simple little landscape, this one is juicy and meaty.

For something
different, Lois Lord’s watercolor “Season Ticket” is humorous and lighthearted.
It pictures a bunch of people —middle-aged and
older, possibly tourists, definitely casual in dress and manner — seated on and
standing by a bench. It’s unclear what they have season tickets for. Possibly
baseball, maybe for the bus, although I question whether the man with a little
dog on a leash would be let into either. It’s
more funny illustration than serious art, but it’s fun to look at, and there
are some nice watery effects.

A.J. Lowe is
represented by two oil paintings that hang next to each other. They are
“Retirement,” a picture of a man in a lawn chair on a tropical beach with palm
trees and in the near distance someone riding a jet ski, and “Spring is
Beckoning,” a painting of a silly-looking woman
wearing a red, flower-patterned dress while picking a red flower. There is a
profusion of yellow flowers in the background. The thing I like about both is
that the people pictured are sotypecast,
especially the woman with her balloon-like face.

It is past time Tacomans come to
know New Muses Theatre Company. Over the past few years this relatively unknown
independent company has produced a slew of high-quality plays. Most but not all
of their works are adapted by company founder Niclas Olson from great works of
literature and performed in the upstairs performance space at Dukesbay Theater
to –sadly –sparse crowds. Olson not only adapts the works himself, but he
nearly always directs and performs in major roles. And their shows are
invariably well produced with outstanding sets and lighting, and fine actors,
all despite limited budgets.

New Muses’ latest production is “Frankenstein.” The well-constructed story and the dramatic
presentation bears no resemblance to any of the many movie versions of the
story nor to the comic film and stage musical by Mel Brooks. This version is
based on and is true to the original novel written my Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley.

Niclas Olson (left) as Victor Frankenstein and Ben Stahl as the creature

The bare bones story is that
Victor Frankenstein (Olson) creates a living creature who looks horrifying but
has a kind and loving heart. He resorts to anger, hate and eventually murder
only after being beaten and cast out by humans who fear him because of his
appearance and his inability to communicate. In this version, the creature (Ben
Stahl) can’t speak at first but gradually learns to talk and becomes quite
eloquent.

The story is epistolary, told in
the beginning through a series of letters and eventually told by the creature
himself. It begins with Captain Walton (Nick Clawson) writing to his sister,
Margaret (Jenna McRill). Captain Walton tells of being trapped in the arctic
ice and of rescuing a man (Frankenstein) floating on the frozen sea, and of the
mysterious story Frankenstein tells him. Finally, the creature confronts his
creator and tells of his loneliness, of the pain of rejection, and of
eventually turning to murder.

Rather than a tale of horror
such as it has been made into by many adaptations, it is a sad tale of longing
and misunderstanding.

It is not an easy play to watch.
It is dark, morbid and intensely dramatic. And it is a tour de force of acting
by the four-person cast, including two cast members who switch constantly
between 18 different characters, convincingly so without resorting to costume
or makeup or any kind of special effects. The audience is able to keep up with
who is who simply because of context, what they say and how they say it. In
addition to Captain Walton, Clawson plays Frankenstein’s father, a blind man
and a judge, a priest, a shepherd and a villager, among others; and McRill
plays Frankenstein’s cousin Elizabeth, his mother, a woman falsely accused of
murder and others.

The set designed by Olson adds
immensely to the drama, and creates a rough and foreboding sense of time and
place. There are ragged and sheer curtains that allow for shocking set changes,
the creation of the monster and even a hanging without having to resort to
expensive special effects.

The play is 90 minutes long and
is presented without an intermission. Seats are not cushioned; I noticed that
some audience members brought their own cushions, which is a good idea. There
were plenty of available seats the night I attended, but the space in its
current configuration seats only 20, so purchasing tickets online is
recommended.

Friday, August 11, 2017

by Alec Clayton

Published in the Weekly Volcano, Aug.10, 2017

A mile away from the Northwest Detention Center where immigrants are held
while awaiting deportation, Spaceworks Gallery is holding their second
exhibition focusing on immigration, Immigration:
Hopes Realized, Dreams Derailed. This follows Scars and Stripes, this past spring’s exhibition on Cambodian
refugees and the U.S. involvement in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

So much is covered by this exhibition of film, paintings, drawings,
sculpture, found art, poetry and other documentation of immigrants’ lives. A
Spaceworks essay by Susan Noyes Platt says, “Behind these facts and statistics
are the personal stories of mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles,
grandmothers and friends who live in fear every time they wake up in the
morning...” This show “suggests some of those stories of courage, of defiance,
of perseverance, of hope and dreams, as well as including the dark side of
immigration, most specifically here in Tacoma, at the Northwest Detention
Center itself.”

When I visited the gallery, artist David Long was still working on his
mural about the hunger strikes at the Detention Center. His mural covers one
wall in an alcove. It is a hand-lettered copy of a letter outlining the demands
of the strikers, none of which have been met. The words are printed in black
and gray, and many of them are partially obliterated by thin coats of white
paint. The words are easily read through the drippy white paint. I take it that
this partial obfuscation is meant to symbolize that their demands are not being
listened to.

Nearby are is a pair of acrylic paintings by Ami Adler called “Ushering
In” and “The Welcome,” depicting immigrants being welcomed into the Detention
Center. The men and women in the paintings look neither welcomed nor happy.
They are painted in a style reminiscent of protest art from the 1930s and ’40s,
with hints of cubism, painted in dull tones of gray and earth colors. These paintings
evoke sadness and anger, as do many of the works in this show.

Ricardo Gomez is showing a series of works called “Portrait of a
Migrant.” They are hinged boxes, one an old shoe-shine box, that open to reveal
a surprise portrait of an immigrant. The surprise element is important to the
appreciation of these works, so I will not say what is found inside the boxes,
but shall only say that his point is well made.

A companion work by Gomez called “Two Sides of the Wall” starkly
illustrates the us-versus-them nature of our current immigration policies. It
is a sculpted wall piece based on a pinball hockey game with mazes and little
Lego-like players and weapons. Slicing across the board at a harsh angle is a
hand saw that divides the two sides. It is beautifully crafted and makes the
point emphatically.

For aesthetic excellence, you can’t beat Janice La Berne Baker's mixed
media painting "Immigration." The chalky dull green and red and gray
complement each other nicely. There is a layered, shrouded figure that looks
like a collage of old billboards that have been exposed part-by-part as layers
are ripped off, and there are two figures whose bodies are obliterated by the
dull pea-green of the background. The artist explains that it is about the
separation of family and about having to hide who you are from those you love.
"It is dedicated to two wonderful women I know who are Dreamers and who
deal with the uncertainty about the future every day," she says.

The few works mentioned here are a tiny fraction of what is to be seen
in this show. The exhibition provides an intriguing mixture of works by
professional and amateur visual artists, poets and filmmakers, including works
by detainees at the Detention Center. It also offers a balance between
aesthetic considerations and political and social commentary. Please stop by
Spaceworks Gallery to see this show.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Masahiro Sugano’s installation at Feast Art Center is as gutsy as
anything you’re likely to see, and I mean that both literally and
metaphorically. It is gutsy in the sense of taking chances and — slightly more
literally, as you will see — in the sense of the popular basketball-metaphor of
leaving it all on the court. Literally there are blood-red sculptural
intestines and hearts and spleens and other body parts all over the floor and
blood splatters everywhere.

Sugano is an award-winning filmmaker. His 2013 series Verses in Exile about Cambodian
deportations was broadcast on PBS online, and his documentary Cambodian Son won Best Documentary award
at the 2014 CAAMFEST and a Special Jury Prize at Cultural Resistance Film Fest
of Lebanon. In this exhibition, he exhibits artifacts from his more than 25
films.

the front of the gallery is a sculpture of a man, presumably Sugano, on
his knees and penetrated by a metal rod. The sculpture is crafted from wood and
mannequin parts. From here the artist “spills his guts” in a stream that
crosses the gallery floor to a rough wooden workbench laden with piles of
detritus from his career in filmmaking: reels, DVDs, books, clothing, a boot
and a United States flag. The significance of the flag, which some viewers may
see as a desecration, is that much of his art and many of his films are about
refugees to the U.S., their lives here, and
their treatment at the hands of our country, including the deportation of
Cambodian-Americans who have been here since early childhood, as documented in Cambodian Son, a film about Kosal Khiev, a
refugee from Cambodia at the age of one-year-old. Khiev became a well-known
poet and was deported back to Cambodia at the age of 32, a country he knew
nothing about and where he couldn’t even speak the language.

The gallery at Feast
Art Center is a long, narrow space with a doorway on one end and a window on
the other, meaning there are only two walls for hanging paintings, drawings and photos. Sugano
utilizes these two walls to display two lines of photographs, mostly film
stills documenting his many films. Included are photos of performance art
pieces by his wife, Anida Yoeu Ali, who curated this show. Also on the walls
are small and excruciatingly precise charts labeling each photograph with titles
and notations on what film or performance piece each is from.

The blood splatters
(red paint) is heavy on the floor and is slung up both walls. It is more
controlled than it might at first appear, heavy where it needs to be and
lighter where other things need to be seen. The splatters go under the
photographs and directionally lead the eye through the various parts of the
installation and serve as a visually unifying element.

In a written statement, Sugano states, “(Americans of all colors) cannot
figure out what to make of me — a Japanese dude doing something in the U.S. But
their eyes light up and the apprehension dissipates when I say I used to make
sushi. Sushi is absolutely irrelevant to me but to this day it defines me. I
fear sometimes that my filmmaking existence is as irrelevant to America. This
show is about the stuff I have been doing over 25 years and will be doing until
the moment I die.”

I suspect visitors
who take the time to carefully view this work will indeed figure out what to
make of this Japanese dude who has lived in three different countries and now
lives in Tacoma.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

If your idea of basketry is mired in the 19th century, you
need to visit All Things Considered:
Basketry in the 21st Century at American Art Company for an
eye-opening.

This is not your grandma’s basket weaving; this is contemporary
sculptural art, free of all traditional restrictions as to
what a basket can or should be. There is a wide variety of materials including
wood, glass, beads, gut, metal and various found objects. Approximately half of
the pieces in the show are shaped like various types of vessels — boxes, bowls,
purses, seed pods. The rest are more like free form sculpture. Some are tiny,
delicate and jewel-like, while others are
massive and monumental in concept.

In the front window, there is a piece called “Garlic” by Pat Hickman
that looks like long, flat, wide strips of sea kelp shaped into a huge clove of
garlic standing about four feet tall. Any verbal description I can think of
will sound ugly; it’s squat, dull of color and rather lifeless, yet there is
beauty in it and an undeniable strong presence, like a boulder thrown in your
path.

The same can be said of Andrea DeFlon’s “Save Our Children,” a series of
three boxes made of a dark, translucent substance, one box with an open face
allowing viewers to see the fiery red floor and dark face inside. The boxes are
stitched with darts of red thread. On the fronts and tops of the boxes are
printed the gray faces of men and women — possibly children, it’s hard to tell.
They are gaunt, with dark shadowed eyes, and they appear ghostly and sad. This
one is emotionally draining to contemplate. Celebrated Tacomaartist Jill
Nordfors-Clark is represented by a couple of large pieces in needle lace
embroidery, hog casing, reed, acrylic paint,
and yarn. Her large piece “When a Tree Falls in the Forest” is a series of
open-weave tubes in a brilliant golden color representing trees standing proud
in a forest, with a single tree fallen and resting at an angle. This piece is
powerful due to its size and upward thrust, yet extremely delicate in its
construction of fine, see-through lace. Unfortunately, a colorful quilt stands
behind it. There are quilts throughout the gallery, which are beautiful and
complement the basketry well, but in this case the quilt conflicts with the
basketry. This piece needs to stand in front of a blank wall.

One of the least basket-like pieces in the show is Leah Gerrard’s
“Cycles,” steel wire and found object. Gerrard hails from Vashon. This piece
reminds me of Marcel Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel.”
A woven rope of steel wire that looks like intestines hangs from a pulley
wheel, combining industrial strength with organic life. It is audacious and
in-our-face, and like Nordfors-Clark’s trees, it blends strength with delicacy.

Another local area artist is Barbara De Pirrofrom Shelton who is represented with a couple of modest pieces, “Bloom
2” and “Radiate.” Both are made with what appears to be hundreds of “leaves” of
white plastic that are layered like fish scales on wire mesh frames. “Bloom 2”
hangs from the ceiling like some kind of nest or pod and “Radiate” is a
circular form that seems to want to expand outward. Both are beautiful in their
shining whiteness — a tribute to organic nature made with waste plastic, an
intelligent concept beautifully executed.

This is the ninth installment of this biennial
juried exhibition presented by the National Basketry Organization.

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About Me

I am an artist and writer living in Olympia, Washington. I write an art review column, a theater review column and arts features for the Weekly Volcano, a community theater review column for The (Tacoma) News Tribune and regular arts features for OLY ARTS (Olympia).
My published novels are: This Is Me, Debbi, David; Tupelo; The Freedom Trilogy (a three-book series consisting of The Backside of Nowhere, Return to Freedom and Visual Liberties); Reunion at the Wetside; The Wives of Marty Winters; Imprudent Zeal and Until the Dawn. I've also published a book on art, As If Art Matters. All are available on amazon.com.
I grew up in Tupelo and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and have been living in the Pacific Northwest since 1988 where I am active in many progressive organizations such as PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).